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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25492144">Lost in the Sauce</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pidgeode/pseuds/pidgeode'>pidgeode</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Prodigal Son (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Chaos, Dark, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Psychotic break, Self-Harm, Spaghetti, Suicide, Withdrawal, i don't even know what this is, read the tags, this entire thing is just a bunch of keyboard smash</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:20:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,426</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25492144</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pidgeode/pseuds/pidgeode</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s a collector that can’t put himself together. It's nothing new.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lost in the Sauce</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He wakes up screaming and it’s nothing new. He feeds his bird and it’s nothing new. He doesn’t feed himself and it’s nothing new. Down, down, down go the pills in one fell swoop. Up, up, up they go back in the sink when he can’t even get those down. Shaky are his hands, he tries to get a grip on himself, on the bottle of pills, but both stay stubbornly empty. Maybe he’ll refill later, but right now he’s got a phone call, which means he has to go bring someone else’s death to life. He wonders, vaguely, if he’s dying too, but there isn’t time to dwell on that because they’re running out of time, he’s running out of time, and he’s out the door.</p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>He wants it to slow down, but doesn’t know what. Brain’s too fast and mouth's too slow and things are speeding by. Blink and life is gone, blink and he’s got files on the desk that are quickly swept off with a resounding slam. People stare. He stares back and the gazes drop. They all think, they all know, they all assume that he’s crazy. He would argue but the antipsychotics he didn’t take say otherwise.</p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>The clock is beep, beep, beeping except it isn’t digital. That’s nothing new, hallucinations, or is it hallucinations, that’s nothing new? Grammar’s out the window but it's better than his body. He feels loose and disorganized. Fluid. His papers are strewn on the floor and there’s a concerned look in someone’s eyes. It’s familiar, they’re familiar, he’s familiar with those words. <em> You okay? </em> No. <em> Fine. </em>Lie. Fine sounds like “find”, he needs to find something. Find a killer. Find himself. Find a pharmacist. Find her. He doesn’t do any of them.</p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>Sweat’s running down his face, soaking his shirt, only it isn’t because his skin still feels dry. There’s a drip-drip-dripping above him that could be another hallucination but it’s annoying and clipped, like the clip-clop of someone’s shoes and bright voice, no, <em> he’s </em> bright, at least, he thinks so, because he’s a bright man with bright eyes and a bright heart—or at least that’s what she always told him—so he says that out loud, and now people are staring at him again, and familiar eyes wipe his brow and pat him on the shoulder, tell him to <em> get some rest </em> because <em> we’re done here, </em>they don’t need him anymore, did they ever need him in the first place? </p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>Familiar number two takes him home and it’s nothing new, tells him to take a seat, sticks something in his mouth, sticks something on the stove. It’s hot, too hot, and too loud and too quick and he’s vibrating. She tells him he has a fever and she’s making pasta and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her he’s bursting at the seams. She asks if he wants her to stay. Yes. <em> No. </em>Lie again. He’s used to lying and he lies on his bed and hears the door close. The shadows come out to play.</p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>Crack goes the teacup as it falls from his hands and shatters on the ground. It’s swallowed up by the shadows and he turns, face-to-face with himself. Himself, a monster under the bed. There’s no such thing as monsters but the man in the mirror begs to differ and the man who told him was a liar. Crack goes the liar in the mirror, then, and crack goes his hand as it connects with the glass and jagged pieces fall to the floor. Dead. He wants things to quiet down a little so he kills the lights, kills the music, kills everything but the living things in his loft. Everyone always told him he was a murderer and it’s nothing new even though he isn't really killing, not yet anyway, but does it even matter so long as he lives up to his own expectations?</p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>Crunching glass on the floor mixed with pills he should take. They break and turn to powder under his feet. He’s breaking, too, it’s more than withdrawal, and a new noise breaks the air, it’s a hallucination, maybe, until he realizes the familiar face was right; there’s another monster in her own fast-paced world. Too fast, too small. He feels too small for his loft is too small for his brain. Maybe the little screeching thing feels the same way. In the distance, someone else who’s not him but is him and is the monster who said monsters weren’t real chirps and twitters in their too-small loft.</p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>Bright man in a dark place in a dark room in a bright city with a bright bird in a dark spot because he grabs her by the throat if only to stop the noise. Snap, crackle pop goes the monster in his hands, in tandem with the snapping of fire on the stove. When did he turn it on? Turn it off. He wants to turn the world off. He adds the bird to the pile of dead things that lay broken under his shoes. Off and on. The flames lick the side of the pot and there’s something cooking in the pot that the familiar face made before she left. He dips his finger in and it burns but he licks it off and it tastes good. Tomatoes. Basil. He takes a step backward and spits it out into the sink with the pills he didn’t take.</p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>He’s really lost it now, as his feet scrape against the floor or scraping things, bleeding things, crunch, crunch, crunch. Pace, pace. Pacemaker. He wants a pacemaker to slow down the drumming in his heart, his head, his mouth that runs with words he doesn’t hear. There’s still the taste of tomato sauce in his mouth and it bubbles, burns, boils over on the stove. He takes a noodle from a plate and holds it out to a little feather ghost. He liked to feed her pasta before he killed her. What’s going on? He has no idea. The spaghetti slips from his hand and his legs go noodle-like under him, too.</p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>The world is turning upside down when he wakes up on the ground and doesn’t scream. It flips to the other side when he feeds himself more pasta and doesn’t feed his bird because he killed her. Do they still need him, the familiar faces from so long ago? The thought leaves his mind almost as soon as it pops in. Time is speeding up. Is he high? No, that’s the opposite of his problem, which is only a fraction of the problem. His problem is the problem is his problem is he’s spiraling in the spaghetti on his table and broken things on the floor and regurgitated things in the sink. Pile, pile, pile. He’s a collector that can’t put himself together. </p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>It’s too much. He sinks to his knees and scoops up the glass, teacup, bird bones that slid through his fingers like sand. Fingertips meet together and the brain melts once and for all, the tide coming in and out but not back in again. Lost boat. He can’t see the shore because he isn’t even onshore, he’s in the city, not a beach, but it’s so hot and his hand burns from boiling sauce and the bubbling of his thoughts that have reached too high a temperature, and there is is; the monster under the bed, on the floor, reflected in the broken glass and his broken eyes. Broken soul. Oysters; the glass catches the light and his reflection is shattered, but maybe it’s not even a reflection, but whatever it is, it has to die. He wraps his hand around a shard of teacup and brings it hard to the ground, to the mirror, to his neck. Neck. Neck. Neck. Maybe he and his sister were more similar than others thought.</p><p>&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>He adds himself to the pile of broken things, bleeding things, unexpectedly expected things. Drip goes the blood, the sauce, the running sink and the ringing in his head that's all dimming, dimming, dimming to a lower volume. His heart beats steadier, then softer, then goes away altogether. Slayed is the monster is the bright man is the bright bird in the dark room and sad are the familiar faces, but it’s nothing new. Everyone expected him to break and for once, he doesn’t care, because his brain stops and his blood stops and his life stops and only then does the world finally slow down.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this was supposed to be a fluffy and crack fic about malcolm being sad and then getting spaghetti or something but then my brain keyboard smashed onto the google docs.</p><p>Edit: UMM so apparently "lost in the sauce" is like a meme word. and here i thought i was being clever, wondering how i could use spaghetti in this fic just to use the title 'lost in the sauce'. I am a fool. This is a tragic-ish dark-ish fic and the title is essentially "rip ur pretty wacked lol"....i'm keeping it.</p><p>(Also! The next part of 'nothing gold can stay' is taking a little longer than hoped; however, it's coming together. It's gonna be a long one.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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